The Moscow Film Festival may lack Cannes' boats, bikinis, and gentle breezes, but it has nevertheless attracted scores of international actors, directors, and deal-makers. For some, the festival represents Moscow's re-emergence as a world-class city. But for a gang of zealots headed by a beautiful brunette, the festival represents a target, and they have been attacking the "film people" with frightening efficiency. Desperate to avoid embarrassment, the Kremlin is trying to cover up the killings. And desperate to stop the killers, the KGB has put Inspector Rostnikov on the case.

Death of a Dissident

The Victims: An unscrupulous cab driver. The killer's own frightened wife. Most troublesome of all, an outspoken dissident, watched closely by the KGB, whose trial had been set for the very next day. The Weapons: A heavy iron-headed hammer. A rusty, antiquated sickle. And a broken vodka bottle. The Cops:Tkach, who seduces suspects into confessing with his apparent innocence. Karpo, a bit of a Tartar, a bit of a vampire, a stolid saint of the Soviet faith.

Red Chameleon

The violent and inexplicable murder of an old man in his bathtub and the theft of a worthless candlestick send Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov on a hunt into the past. A ring of car thieves with a taste for expensive vehicles is at large in Moscow's streets. High above the gray city, a sniper is taking aim at police officers, and the obsessed detective Emil Karpo takes the assignment to heart.

A Cold Red Sunrise

At an icebound naval weather station in far Siberia, the young daughter of an exiled dies under suspicious circumstances. The high-ranking Commissar sent to investigate the mystery suffers a similar fate: he is murdered by an icicle thrust into his skull. Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is dispatched to solve the Commissar's murder, with one caveat: He is not to investigate the girl's death. Even if all the clues tell him that the two cases are linked.

Death of a Russian Priest

When Inspector Rostnikov arrives in the town of Arkush with Emil Karpo, the policeman nicknamed the Vampire, he finds a community stunned by the murder of the outspoken Father Merhum. But it is the priest's cryptic last words that make Rostnikov wonder if this was indeed a political assassination or a murder with a motive closer to home.

Tarnished Icons

In the topsy-turvy world of post-communist Russia, Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov's work is never done. Three congregants from a local synagogue, gunned down in the night, are the latest victims in the seemingly systematic execution of Jews in Moscow. But the shocking identity of one of the murdered men leads Rostnikov to suspect that, rather than simple intolerance, a more calculated motive lies behind the slaughter. Meanwhile, the city's women are under siege by The Shy One - a knife-wielding rapist who strikes without being seen....

Blood and Rubles

Crime in post-communist Russia has only gotten worse: rubles are scarce, blood, plentiful. In the eyes of Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov and his metropolitan police team, newfound democracy has unleashed the desperation that pushes people over the edge, and a trio of nasty cases confirms their worst fears.

The Dog Who Bit a Policeman

Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has adapted well to life without Communism. But under the Soviets, blood feuds were pursued in the dark halls of bureaucracy, and now they take place in the streets. An international drug ring has chosen Moscow as its next port of call, and the only thing standing in its way is the budding Russian mob, headed by a young man whose brutality is matched only by his madness. In a gang war of this magnitude, no civilian is safe.

Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express: Inspector Rostnikov, Book 14

Inside the Moscow Police Department, madness reigns. Inspectors Karpo and Zelach enter the underground world of post-punk rock clubs searching for clues to the disappearance of an anti-Semitic rock star who happens to be the son of one of Moscow's most powerful Jewish citizens.

Fall of a Cosmonaut: An Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov Mystery, Book 13

It was one of those days when Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov should have stayed in bed. After braving a ferocious storm, Rostnikov arrives inside the Petrovka headquarters only to find three very peculiar investigations waiting for him. First there's cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovka, whose last words on the space station Mir were instructions to contact Rostnikov if something went wrong with the mission. Now, Vladovka is missing and his fellow cosmonauts are turning up dead.

Rostnikov's Vacation

A Jewish man in a squalid government flat finds a killer in his shower. A young punk girl hurtles naked through the window of her apartment. And in the Crimea, at a health retreat for mid-level functionaries, an aging policeman’s death is made to look like heart failure.

The Man Who Walked Like a Bear

Porfiry and Sarah Rostnikov have been in love since the end of World War II, growing old together as the Soviet Union lurches towards modernity. Sarah is recovering from a brain operation, her police inspector husband at her side, when a bearlike man staggers into her hospital room. Hulking, naked, and insensible, he is about to leap out the window when Rostnikov talks him off the ledge. But before the orderlies take him away, the giant whispers a secret to the investigator. Someone has been stealing from the factory where he works.

Hard Currency

When a former Russian advisor stands accused of murdering a female citizen in Cuba, Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is dispatched to the former Soviet Unions one-time ally on a criminal investigation-cum-diplomatic mission. With a watchful KGB agent on his tail Rostnikov must grapple with his cunning Cuban counterpart as well as a perplexing murder scenario, to save face for his mother country.

A Whisper to the Living

Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov is an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Union. He and his team are searching for a serial killer who has claimed at least 40 victims. And then there is the problem of protecting a visiting British journalist who is working on a story about a Moscow prostitution ring--in doing so Rostnikov and his team uncover a chain of murders that lead to a source too high to be held accountable if the police want to keep their jobs--or their lives.

Lieberman's Folly: The Abe Lieberman Mysteries, Book 1

A pair of cops hunt the killer of the most beautiful hooker on Chicago’s North Side. On a blistering Chicago afternoon, the Cubs are winning and Abe Lieberman is waiting to meet a prostitute. This mild-mannered old police detective still has a few tricks up his sleeves - and one of them is named Estralda Valdez. One of the city’s loveliest women of the night, she is Lieberman’s most prized confidential informant, and she needs help with a psychotic john. Though they suspect she’s only paranoid, Lieberman and his partner, Bill Hanrahan, agree to watch Valdez’s back.

Lieberman's Law: The Abe Lieberman Mysteries

Abe Lieberman, the Chicago PD detective, has never has it easy when it comes to emotional cases, but this time the action is getting little too close to home. His temple has been vandalized along with four others, and it looks like the vandals have more sinister plans in mind. Finding the culprit opens a window on the broiling ethnic tensions on Chicago's North Side, and what's happening in Abe's family life does nothing to turn down the heat.

To Catch a Spy: Toby Peters, Book 22

It’s a lucky thing that Cary Grant once trained as an acrobat, because Toby Peters’s life is in the actor’s hands. As the two men sprint through the pitch-dark woods, trying to elude a man with a gun, they come to a canyon ledge. With nowhere to go but down, they scramble over the side. Peters slips, and Grant grabs hold of his wrist. As the killer closes in, Cary’s grip begins to falter....

Lieberman's Choice

Bernie Shepard comes home with a shotgun. He opens the door to his bedroom, and sees what he expected - his wife in bed with another cop. Two pumps of the shotgun take care of them, and Shepard carries out the rest of his plan. Accompanied by his dog, this half-mad detective goes to the roof of his building, where he has built a small fortress stocked with food, water, and weapons. Talking Shepard down falls to Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan, the odd-couple partners in Chicago homicide.

Lieberman's Day

In a posh part of Chicago’s North Side, two Trinidadian men look for someone to jump. Waiting outside an apartment building, they see a couple shivering in the cold as they make their way to their car. The Trinidadians draw guns, demand money - and quickly go too far. Shots ring out, and the muggers run. Behind them, the man is dead, and his pregnant wife lays bleeding in the street.The murder victim is the nephew of Abe Lieberman, one of the most dignified cops in Chicago homicide. When he learns of the killing, Lieberman’s calm facade cracks. As he works with his partner, Bill Hanrahan, to find the killers, Lieberman makes a pact with the devil....

The People Who Walk in Darkness: An Inspector Rostnikov Mystery

Inspector Rostnikov is a Russian bear of a man, an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Russia. Known as "The Washtub", Rostnikov is one of the most engaging and relevant characters in crime fiction, a sharp and caring policeman as well as the perfect tour guide to a changing (that is, disintegrating) Russia. Surviving pogroms and politburos, he has solved crimes, mostly in spite of the powers that rule his world.

Smart Moves: A Toby Peters Mystery, Book 12

dentist dangles from the window of a swanky Park Avenue hotel, while Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who's very far from home, clutches the man by his jacket, which is tearing slowly, stitch by stitch. Across the room, a dead man lies on the bed, his killer pounding on the hotel room door, which sounds like it's going to give way as quickly as the dentist's jacket. Somehow, this entire mess is Albert Einstein's fault. Two nefarious groups have been threatening the great physicist. One is a ring of blackmailers who claim to have evidence that he has been passing nuclear secrets to Russia.

He Done Her Wrong: Toby Peters, Book 8

You can't trust a man who's dressed as Mae West, especially not in Mae West's house. One of Hollywood's earliest sex symbols, the whip-smart blonde's star has fallen since the Hays Code cracked down on the racy repartee that made her famous. Her latest project is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, whose only copy is stolen just after she finishes her first draft. Tonight she's having a Mae West party, with every guest a man dressed as her. The thief is among those in drag, and P.I. Toby Peters has come to tear off his wig. He's there as a favor to his brother, a brutal cop who had a fling with West when she first moved to Hollywood.

Buried Caesars: Toby Peters, Book 14

The uniformed man standing before Toby Peters is General Douglas MacArthur, a soldier who considers himself the only man who can defeat the Japanese. But though he may be all-powerful in the South Pacific, today he is in Los Angeles with a problem only a detective can solve. The general has an eye on a postwar promotion to the White House, and an aide has stolen his war chest, his donor list, and a handful of embarrassing private letters. To get them back, Toby may need some help.

The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance: A Toby Peters Mystery, Book 11

Toby Peters wakes up with a headache, a gun in his face, and a body on the hotel-room bed. He is less surprised by the gun than by the man holding it: Marion Morrison, a.k.a John Wayne. Both of them were lured here by the dead man. The next arrival is a prostitute named Olivia, and hot on her heels is the house detective, who's come to check on the commotion in Room 303.

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road

Publisher's Summary

The Moscow Film Festival may lack Cannes' boats, bikinis, and gentle breezes, but it has nevertheless attracted scores of international actors, directors, and deal-makers. For some, the festival represents Moscow's re-emergence as a world-class city. But for a gang of zealots headed by a beautiful brunette, the festival represents a target, and they have been attacking the "film people" with frightening efficiency. Desperate to avoid embarrassment, the Kremlin is trying to cover up the killings. And desperate to stop the killers, the KGB has put Inspector Rostnikov on the case. With his Jewish wife and his suspect taste for American crime novels, Rostnikov is hardly the KGB's favorite cop. But he's their best hope to catch the woman with brown hair, complicated motives, and a really big bomb.

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